“Matter of Time”

Even in the face of the cancer that eventually took her life, Sharon Jones rarely had time for sentimentality; she was the kind of artist best defined by her voice as a reassuring force of power, whether it was personal or collective. Her ballads were great, of course, but the Sharon most fans remembered was the one who made people dance, and tried to make them keep up with her boundless energy.

So it’s comforting in a way to hear Jones's voice again, for the first time since she passed, not in repose or sorrow but belting out. “Matter of Time,” the first single from the upcoming album Soul of a Woman, is filled with the words of a woman who holds out not just hope but confidence in the long arc of the moral universe bending towards justice (“It's a matter of time/Before wrongs will be righted/It's a matter of time, yeah/'fore all people will be united”). And what can you do, not believe her? 15-plus years of history in her work with the Dap-Kings weighs heavy on this one. Having long since settled into a groove with her band, you can feel both her comfortable confidence and her hard-working drive just below the surface, longing to see the light that she's certain is just around the corner. She'll take you there.